In September of 2014, Michelle Arendas and Josh Avsec matched on Tinder. Josh sent Michelle a message, which she answered two months later. The two went back and forth with huge gaps, messaging only every couple of months, giving silly excuses – for years.

“It was just something funny that I shared with my friends as an inside joke, for so long,” said Arendas when we caught up with her by phone.

“It always just felt like a joke and I never really thought about anything any more than it was just a simple joking conversation,” Avsec told us.

Josh recently tweeted a screen capture of their conversation. It was retweeted tens of thousands of times. BuzzFeed picked up the story. Then, Tinder offered the two a free vacation to Hawaii.

Some people may be skeptical. How could the two never have run into each other at Kent State over three years? Well, they only knew each other's first names from their Tinder profiles. Michelle and Josh are pretty common. And they had totally different majors: Michelle in communications on one side of campus, with Josh in zoology on the other.

“It’s really not that uncommon for me to not know him, like, I’m not that surprised that we haven’t met before,” said Arendas.

Kent’s main campus has nearly 30,000, but Josh says he knows a catch when he sees one.

“If I saw that girl walking around, trust me, I would have noticed it,” said Avsec.

To top it off, he grew up in Independence, just a short drive from Michelle in Strongsville.

“It’ll be really nice to just actually get to spend some time together and get to know each other,” Arendas told us.

Josh only learned Michelle’s last name when someone tagged her on his Twitter post, last week. They exchanged numbers and began texting, but have never spoken on the phone. It’s increasing the anticipation for the face-to-face meeting… with the whole internet watching.

“We’ve been told by like 600 people to get married,” said Avsec.

The two say Tinder wants them to meet in Hawaii and the trip will happen soon. We'll keep up with them and let you know if there's going to be a second date.